Stowell threw up the window and heard the dread news. After a moment he answered, in a voice that sounded strange in Robbie's ears:
"Wait for me. I will go back with you."
When he was ready to go he wrote a message to Fenella, and left it for Mrs. Quayle to send off as soon as the telegraph office opened:
"He has gone, heaven, forgive me. I am going home now."
It was Sunday morning, and the sleeping streets echoed to the rattle of the flying wheels. When they got into the country (they were taking the shortest cuts) the farms were lying idle and quiet. Stowell sat with folded arms while they raced past the whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs, and scattered flocks of geese that went off with screams and stretched necks.
On arriving at Ballamoar he paused before entering the house. The pastoral tranquillity of the place was heart-breaking. The sun had risen, the rooks were cawing, the linnets were twittering in the eaves, a kitten was playing with a butterfly in the porch—it was just as if nothing had happened during the night.
Janet was in his father's room, with red eyes and a handkerchief in her hand. She did not speak, but her silence seemed to say, "Why didn't you come before?"
Stowell advanced to the side of the bed. The august face on the pillow, in the majesty and tranquillity of death, had never before looked so calm and noble, but that also seemed to say: "Why didn't you come before?" He reached over and put his lips to the cold forehead. And then, with head down, he hurried from the room.
He could never afterwards remember what he did during the rest of that day—only that to escape from the vague cheerfulness, the hushed bustle, the half-smothered hysteria, which come to a house after a death, he had strolled along the shore and past the ruined church in which he had walked with Fenella.
At length Janet came to him in the library to say "Good-night" and to sob out something about not grieving too much. And then he was left alone.